Games I beat in 2015: #1 - Kirby's Adventure

First you draw a circle. Then you dot the eyes. Add a great big smile. And presto, it's Kirby. My first memory of this pink ball was on a car trip to my grandparents. It was some holiday, and Kirby's Dream Land was a gift my brothers and I had received. Okay, so it was a white ball at the time. The next time I played Kirby's Dream Land I was in a car on the roof of a department building waiting for my wife and mother-in-law to do some shopping. This time, Kirby is associated with the Wii U's gamepad as I played Kirby's Adventure and my son complained about how often I would die at the same point.

Did you know Kirby can slide-kick? Down-A does it. Would have been helpful to learn way before this late-game stage! But who reads manuals?

So how much of this controls kerfuffle is my fault and how much of it is the controls is a good question. Or, how much of it is me not adapting to the controls is perhaps the best question. Kirby does not like to turn quickly in this game. When a boss heads towards Kirby as he runs away, stopping, turning and sucking up the star necessary to defeat the boss is a sequence that demands a fair amount of timing that the controls and I could not agree on in what one would call a healthy relationship.

But I did it. Eventually. The final boss was a bit of a surprise as the game quickly turned into a side-scrolling shooter and then a fast paced battle. But it fun. Real fun. A lot of the bosses felt fairly slow if I didn't have a good weapon for the boss or lost it mid-fight. It was interesting that the credits scroll showed Kirby fighting the various bosses and using a variety of weapons that finished them off quickly. Tips and tricks for your next play-through seem a bit odd even if appreciable.

I was surprised how brown this game is. All the menus and a lot of the backgrounds are these shades of brown and orange brown, but they do look surprisingly nice. In fact, while playing these neutral colors blend in so well that the whole game feels much more colorful than it is. The color was so profound though that when they called back to Kirby's Dreamland in a black and white stage, it was not only a shocker of the difference between the Game Boy and the Famicom but also a real easy way to but a huge dorky smile on my face.

Kirby's Adventure felt a little slow. Kirby can fly anywhere - an interesting game mechanic balanced by the movement speed being noticeably different from walking on the ground. That didn't stop some levels from being a cake-walk by having some patience and just floating through them. It did prevent me from accessing some secrets and keep me from developing enemy-handling skills to make me better prepared to take on the bosses. But patience prevailed and Kirby was victorious.